Friday, July 20, 2012

Nexus7 Kindle vs. Amazon Kindle Fire

If you are thinking about getting a Kindle Fire, you should probably get a Nexus 7 (with Kindle app) instead, since they both cost $199. Nexus7 weighs less, has higher resolution, and lasts slightly longer on battery. Whereas the KindleFire is just a Kindle, the Nexus7 is more competitive with iPad.
Both are 7-inch tablets running Android operating system. The Nexus7 has the latest hardware/software, whereas the Kindlefire is a couple years out-of-date (yes, KindleFire is 6 months old, but it's tech is older). Amazon is rumored to be refreshing KindleFire soon.

The weight makes it much easier to hold. The higher resolution screen is much nicer to read. The battery life is slightly longer.

It's not just the device, but also the cloud, and the social. All your Kindle content is held within the cloud, as is your "Google Play" content. But Google has a lot more "social" features. When I turned on my device, its top "Recommended Apps" was "Orbot: Tor on Android". That's because in my Google social circles are people who downloaded this app and recommended it. It was a weird bit of mind-reading, as that was indeed top of my list of applications I wanted to download (after the Kindle app).

Nexus 7

Kindle Fire

Android OS

v4.1 (Jelly Bean)

v2.3 (Gingerbread)

Weight

340 grams

413 grams

Display size

1280x800

1024x768

Display PPI

216

169

Display tech

IPS

IPS

Display glass

Gorilla

Gorilla

Storage

8 gigabyte

8 gigabyte

Height

7.81

7.50

Width

4.7

4.7

Thickness

0.411

0.450

CPU type

ARM Tegra3

ARM OMAP 4430

CPU speed

1.2 GHz

1.0 GHz

CPU cores

4

2

GPU

GeForce

PowerVR SGX540

RAM

1.0 gigabyte

0.512 gigabyte

Battery

4325 mAh

4400 mAh

Battery video

9 hours

7.5 hours

Battery e-book

10 hours

8 hours

WiFi

b/g/n

b/g/n

Bluetooth

yes

no

Camera (front)

1.2 megapixel

no

Input: mic

yes

no

Input: NFC

yes

no

Input: GPS

yes

no

Input: magnet

yes

no

Input: gyro

yes

no

Input: accelerometer

yes

no

Input: ambient light

no

no

Output: video

no

no

Output: speaker

no

no

Output: headphones

yes

yes

One possible reason to get the KindleFire instead is that it's more focused on eBook reading, and therefore possibly better as a gift to somebody who is computer illiterate and just wants to read books.

I think your last sentence is stretching logic. If someone just wanted to read, they can get a cheaper and longer battery life black and white kindle. With the Nexus 7, people have the freedom to install the Amazon App Store app and the Kindle App in addition to everything full Android offers.

However, I wouldn't mind seeing a price war between Google/Asus and Amazon. It's possible Amazon can come out with similar hardware but at a much lower price but with locked software. That might force Asus to lower the price on the 16 GB model which can probably sold at $199 with a thin profit and then eliminate the 8 GB model.